U-Speak-S

Inspiration

In today’s world of digitization and competitive market place ,use of email services and online messaging services is increasing day by day. The USPS is working efficiently. They sent greeting cards, messages, important document anywhere across US in mere few dollars with starting price of $0.55. In the current world operational efficiency is not enough. According to usps postal fact data,in the year 2018 ,number of visited retail customer are 838.7 million and in the year 2016 ,it was 877.4 million . It motivates us to come up with solution which can lead to increasing number of customers and ultimately revenue. It is important to attract more and more customer by providing convenient and quick services to them. Same store revenue for USPS stores are on a decline. One contributing factor might be less number of people visiting the stores. This can be due to people getting busy with other things, or might also be because of other competitors having the advantage of better tech and accessibility, which eliminates the need of customers visiting the stores for most of their requirements.

What it does

Millennials are looking for best price to quality ratio. Now, to keep the price low while keeping the user experience as authentic as possible, it is important to cut down on redundant costs and invest in technology that paves way for the future. Keeping this in mind, we have a three step solution to address the above mentioned issue.

How we built it

The first step is to use Alexa skills to elevate the customer experience. It could be making the lines go faster, or helping our customers track package. Using the speech recognition skills of Alexa, not only helps in automating redundant tasks, but also helps in reducing the cost.

Transition is very important for any organisation to continue on the path of growth. In order to increase the profits of USPS, we suggest that USPS transitions from a postal service to ‘The Everything Store’. This can be achieved by having tie-ups with organisations like Target and Costco for a storage space. This strategy has a two-fold benefit. It not only helps in cutting down the redundant costs like that of storage space, but also merges the gap between ‘prospective gifts’ and a means(USPS) to deliver these gifts to loved ones.

Another important step to further this, is to install lockers in these USPS ‘Everything’ Stores for customers to pick up and deliver packages. These lockers will be password protected and customers will get the passwords to open their respective lockers, on the mobile app itself.

What we learned

Tying up USPS with stores like target and Costco can motivate people to visit the USPS store while shopping. Also, it will be profitable for USPS by being in a high traffic area with great exposure with reduced cost of rental space.

Integrating Alexa with USPS services will help in increasing productivity and reducing manual effort by tracking packages, organizing different tasks, weighing packages, sharing locker number to place the package.